Saturday 11 August 2012

Bihar News, Latest News from Bihar, News of Bihar, Biharprabha News

Bihar News, Latest News from Bihar, News of Bihar, Biharprabha News

Urban Poor in Bihar to get 50000 Houses for Free

Posted: 11 Aug 2012 06:30 PM PDT

Bihar CM Nitish Kumar has announced that the state government will build 50,000 houses for poor people in 28 towns of the state.

The 50,000 houses would be built under integrated housing scheme, apart from those being erected under the central project Indira Awas Yojana, the chief minister said while handing over keys of 192 newly-built houses here to beneficiaries who are urban poor.

The houses were built in Isopur and Phulwarishrief areas of the state capital. Kumar emphasised the need for constructing earthquake- resistant houses saying a master plan was being prepared for such houses for Patna city. He also planted trees on the occasion.

Court extends the Police Custody of Aruna Chaddha in Geetika Sharma Case

Posted: 11 Aug 2012 05:30 PM PDT

Geetika SharmaA Delhi court on Saturday extended by a day the police custody of the now-defunct MDLR Airlines’ official Aruna Chaddha in a case related to the suicide of former flight attendant Geetika Sharma here Aug 5.

Duty Magistrate Manish Khurana extended the time for custodial interrogation of Chaddha till Sunday after police said her custody was required for recovering documents from her office.

Counsel B.S. Rana appeared for Chaddha, who was arrested Wednesday, and opposed the police plea. Chaddha was Thursday sent to two days’ police custody.

Geetika left a suicide note blaming Chaddha for her extreme step. Geetika also named her ex-employer and Haryana’s former minister Gopal Goyal Kanda in the suicide note, police said.

Charges of criminal intimidation have been slapped on Kanda, who was denied anticipatory bail by another Delhi court Thursday. He is yet to appear before investigators for questioning.

Geetika’s body was found hanging in her house in north Delhi’s Ashok Vihar. Her autopsy report confirmed there was no foul play and that she died due to hanging.

Kanda owned the MDLR Airlines where Geetika worked as a flight attendant. After the airlines ceased to function in 2009, she was given a job in another company owned by Kanda. She later quit the company.

According to Geetika’s brother, Gaurav, his sister was being constantly mentally harassed by Kanda and Chaddha.

A close relative of former Haryana minister Gopal Goyal Kanda was detained Saturday here in the case of suicide of a former flight attendant and Kanda’s employee in the national capital Aug 5, Delhi Police said.

Over a dozen investigators, led by Inspector Pankaj Malik, Saturday afternoon raided Kanda’s house in the Civil Lines here and searched it for more than an hour.

“We detained an 18-year-old man who was present there,” a police official said, describing him as a close family member of Kanda.

Malik said: “We are looking for Gopal Kanda but he is not there.”

The police team also recorded statements of family members of Kanda present in the house. Kanda’s office building here was also searched.

Pakistan forms Panel to address the grievances of Hindus of Sindh

Posted: 11 Aug 2012 04:30 PM PDT

with concerns rising in India over reported persecution of Hindus in Pakistan, President Asif Ali Zardari has formed a three-MPs’ panel to meet and reassure Hindus in Sindh of their security after their families decided to flee their homes.

Zardari has taken serious notice of reports of the sense of insecurity among Hindu families in Sindh and directed the authorities to address their grievances and to submit a report to him, reported Associated Press of Pakistan.

Farhatullah Babar, spokesperson to the president, said Zardari constituted a three-member committee of members of parliament to visit different parts of Sindh to express solidarity with the Hindus on behlf of the government and to reassure them about their security and well-being.

The committee comprises Senator Hari Ram, National Assembly member Lal Chand and Federal Minister Moula Bakhsh Chandio.

About 250 Pakistani Hindus have moved to India after promising authorities here that they will return after completing their pilgrimage.

The plight of Hindus in Pakistan has sparked concern and outrage in India.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) protested the attitude of Pakistan towards Hindus living in that country.

“The government should see if they want to stay here or go back. We demand that government should take action, and tell the whole nation what is Pakistan’s attitude towards Hindus,” BJP leader Rajiv Pratap Rudy told reporters here.

The movement of 250 Hindus to India has coincided with the ‘Minorities Day’ in Pakistan.

Pakistan Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf Saturday underlined that “the government of Pakistan stands committed to the preservation of rights of minorities in Pakistan and has taken a number of concrete steps for their welfare”.

“One of the top priorities of the present democratic government is to protect the rights of the minorities and further empower them,” he said.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik went public Thursday night alleging a “conspiracy” against Pakistan and demanded to know why the Indian high commission in the Pakistani capital had issued so many visas to Hindus.

He refused to let the Hindus proceed beyond Jacobabad, Sindh, unless he was satisfied they would not take asylum in India citing religious persecution — as some Pakistani Hindus had done in the past.

Eventually, after some hours, the Hindus were allowed to go to the Wagah border check post after their representatives pledged to return to Pakistan.

Delhi Mumbai industrial corridor to be launched soon

Posted: 11 Aug 2012 03:32 PM PDT

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav Saturday said that his government would extend all possible help to the ambitious Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) since it was “an important project for extensive industrial development in the state”.

At a high-level presentation on the DMIC, the chief minister said the 1,483-km project would begin from Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai and touch Dadri at Greater Noida. Of the seven investment centres and 13 industrial areas en route, one investment centre and one industrial area were located in Uttar Pradesh.

The investment centre is at Greater Noida and the industrial centre is in the Meerut-Muzaffarnagar area. On both sides of these centres, 150-200 km area has been identified as a dedicated freight corridor.

The chief minister said that since the proposed Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor meets at Khurja, the project had become very important for the development of Uttar Pradesh.

He added that once the project is complete, agricultural produce and other products would easily reach Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai.

Yadav assured a union government team, headed by Saurabh Chandra, secretary, industrial policy and development, that his government would expedite development of state projects under the Dadri-Noida-Ghaziabad investment centre.

These include Bokadi railway station, the Metro Rail in Noida and Greater Noida, Dadri-Tughlakabad-Ballabgarh railway station, Noida-Greater Noida-Faridabad Expressway, development of an auto mart, establishing a power plant and a logistic park/township.

Yadav added that priority will be given to developing a proposed hi-tech integrated industrial township in Greater Noida on land available with the UP State Industrial Development Corporation (UPSIDC) after talks with farmers, who would be made stake-holders in the land acquired from them.

He underlined that instead of the government and the industrial sector gaining from the land, the farmers should benefit. Yadav instructed infrastructure and industrial development commissioner Anil Kumar Gupta to act on this.

During the presentation, the chief minister said that around Rs.75,000 crore is likely to be invested in the Dadri-Noida-Greater Noida area within the ambit of these project. As a result, around 12 lakh jobs would be created.

Industries such as food, electronics, auto and IT would come up in the area. The central government’s expenditure on the project would Rs.3,000 crore.

Nehru Trpphy Boat Race enthralls Lakhs of Spectators in Kerala

Posted: 11 Aug 2012 02:30 PM PDT

Alleppy, Kerala: Nehru Boat Race Enthralled over lakhs of people in its 60th edition at Punnamada lake in Allapuzha district of Kerala.

“This is something amazing. We have been planning this trip as early as February. It is simply superb and one of the most amazing sporting events we have watched,” said a young British couple on their first visit to India and Kerala.

Chief guest Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar watched the race with ministers Vayalar Ravi, K.C. Venugopal, Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy and a galaxy of political leaders from the state.

The event began at 3 p.m. to a rousing start with boats and scullers participating in the customary drill, moving their oars in symphony.

The history of this event, which has now become an important itinerary for global tourists, dates back to 1952 when the then Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru visited the state and a pageantry of boats accompanied him from Kottayam to Alappuzha.

An impromptu race conducted in Nehru’s honour. So thrilled Nehru was by the performance of the oarsmen, that he jumped into a snake boat.

On returning to Delhi, he donated a silver trophy, a replica of a snake boat mounted on a wooden abacus with an inscription and his signature. This is the trophy that the winner of the snake boat race is awarded.

“I have seen other regattas but the beauty of this is the variety this race has in terms of size and shapes of the boats. I have been here a decade back but today the popularity of this race is so huge that it has now become an important itinerary for many tourists from Germany,” said Thomas Kulsen, an engineer who came just to watch this event.

The ‘race track’ on the 1-km long lake is 850 metres in length. This year there were more than 100 competing boats, with 16 in the snake boat race category.

The length of the snake boat varies between 120 feet and 140 feet and each has about 120 oarsmen. Tomy Pulikattil, one of the organisers of the race, told IANS that despite the rains, “we had more than 2,500 foreign tourists and more than 30,000 spectators”.

“The event was delayed a little because of a complaint raised by one of the participating snake boats in the heats,” said Pulikattil.

The winner of the snake boat race was the Sree Ganeshan snake boat.

Massive Earthquake in Iran Claims 200 Lives and injures 1500

Posted: 11 Aug 2012 02:13 PM PDT

Massive Earthquake in Northwestern Iran with 6.2-magnitude killed at least 180 people and injured over 1500. At least 60 villages sustained damage ranging from 50 to 80 percent, while 4 other villages had been totally leveled to the ground.

At least 9 aftershocks jolted the same area and were felt in a wide region near the Caspian Sea, causing panic among the population.

The US Geological Survey, which monitors quakes worldwide, ranked them at 6.4 and 6.3, respectively.

Saei, local Crisis Committee chief, urged people in the quake region to stay outdoors and spend the night at parks and open spaces in anticipation of more aftershocks.

Thousands fled their homes and remained outdoors as at least 20 aftershocks hit the area.

Casualty numbers could well rise, Iranian officials feared, as some of the injured are in a critical condition, others are still trapped under the rubble and rescuers have yet to reach some of the affected villages.

Iran is straddled by major fault lines and has suffered several devastating earthquakes in recent years, including a 6.6 magnitude quake in 2003 which turned the southeastern historic city of Bam into dust and killed more than 25,000 people.

The U.S. Geological Survey measured Saturday’s first quake at 6.4 magnitude and said it struck 60 km (37 miles) northeast of the city of Tabriz at a depth of 9.9 km (6.2 miles). A second quake measuring 6.3 struck 49 km (30 miles) northeast of Tabriz 11 minutes later at a similar depth.

The second quake struck near the town of Varzaghan. “The quake was so intense that people poured into the streets through fear,” Fars news agency said of the town.

About 210 people in Varzaghan and Ahar have been rescued from under the rubble of collapsed buildings, the official IRNA news agency said, quoting a local official.

“So far 73 bodies from Varzaghan and Ahar have been handed over to the coroner’s office,” IRNA quoted Bahram Samadirad, a provincial official from the office, as saying.

He added, “Since some people are in a critical condition and rescue workers are still trying to rescue people from under the rubble, unfortunately it is possible for the number of casualties to rise.”

Photographs posted by Iranian news websites showed about a dozen bodies lying on the floor in the corner of a white-tiled morgue in Ahar, and medical staff, surrounded by anxious residents, working on the injured in the open air as dusk fell.

“I was just on the phone talking to my mother when she said ‘there’s just been an earthquake’, then the line was cut,” one woman from Tabriz, who lives outside Iran, wrote on Facebook after telephoning her mother in the city.

“God, what has happened? After that I couldn’t get through. God has also given me a slap, and it was very hard.”

Tabriz is a major city and trading hub far from Iran’s oil producing areas and known nuclear facilities. Buildings in the city are substantially built, and the Iranian Students’ News Agency said nobody in the city itself had been killed or hurt.

Homes and businesses in Iranian villages, however, are often made of concrete blocks or mud brick that can crumble and collapse in a strong quake.

Fars quoted lawmaker Abbas Falahi as saying he believed rescue workers had not yet been able to reach between 10 and 20 villages.

A local provincial official urged people in the region to stay outdoors during the night for fear of aftershocks, according to IRNA. Falahi said people in the region were in need of bread, tents and drinking water.

The Turkish Red Crescent said it was sending a truck full of emergency supplies to the border, an official said.

Farmer in Bengal arrested for Questioning Mamata Bannerjee

Posted: 11 Aug 2012 01:37 PM PDT

Democracy has eloped from West Bengal. Shiladitya Chowdhury, a Farmer by profession has been arrested for questioning Mamata Bannerjee.

Banerjee, on a visit to the Maoist-affected Belpahari area in the district Wednesday, was addressing a public rally when Chowdhury stood up and asked her: “Farmers are dying because they have no money. Empty promises are not enough. What are you doing for farmers?”

Stunned by the question, an angry Banerjee immediately branded him a “Maoist” following which Chowdhury was detained and taken for interrogation by the police.

Chowdhury who hails from West Midnapore district, has been booked for “disrupting a public rally and assaulting police officers”. The step has come in for criticism from civil society who slammed Banerjee for her “growing intolerance”.

“Shiladitya Chowdhury was arrested Saturday morning and booked for disrupting a public rally, entering into a high security zone and assaulting police personnel,” Superintendent of Police, Jhargram, Bharati Ghosh told IANS.

He was later remanded to 14 days’ judicial custody by a court. He was, however, allowed to go that day but was arrested Saturday morning.

The arrest has drawn condemnation from the civil society and yet again brought to the fore the temperamental nature of Banerjee, who is known for losing her cool over the slightest of uncomfortable questions.

“What can I say? The arrest is highly unwarranted and highlights not only Banerjee’s growing intolerance, but also her dictatorial attitude. I don’t know what has happened to her,” social activist and writer Mahasweta Devi told IANS.

Earlier Banerjee had stormed out of an interactive programme on a TV channel following a barrage of questions by students, over the arrest of a professor for forwarding a cartoon depicting her.

Branding them as “Maoists”, Banerjee had even instructed police to take photographs of those in the audience who had asked the questions.

“I can only say that whatever has happened is highly deplorable. Being a people’s representative, Banerjee should have answered his questions and not had him arrested,” noted poet and novelist Sunil Gangopadhyay said.

India rejects Pakistan’s claim of Conspiracy behind VISA to Hindus

Posted: 11 Aug 2012 01:30 PM PDT

India has rejected Pakistan’s charges of a “conspiracy” about giving so many visas to Pakistani Hindus, saying due process and diligence was exercised in accordance with a decades-long visa pact.

“We have exercised visas after due diligence and followed due process in accordance with the India-Pakistan visa pact which regulates travel between the two countries,” government sources told IANS.

“Pakistan has an exit control policy which empowers them to detain any traveller if the visas were not issued in proper categories and following the prescribed system,” said the sources.

They were reacting to Pakistan’s Interior Minister Rehman Malik’s accusation alleging a “conspiracy” by India against Pakistan and demanded to know why the Indian High Commission in the Pakistani capital had issued so many visas to Hindus.

Malik refused to let the Hindus proceed beyond Jacobabad, Sindh, unless he was satisfied they would not take asylum in India citing religious persecution — as some Pakistani Hindus had done earlier.

Eventually, after some hours, the Hindus were allowed to go after their representatives pledged to return to Pakistan.

About 250 Pakistani Hindus have moved to India after promising authorities here that they will return after completing their pilgrimage. Many of them complained of ill-treatment and persecution in Pakistan.

Micromax A84 Superfone Elite launched in Indian Market

Posted: 11 Aug 2012 01:19 PM PDT

Indian Handset Maker Micromax has rolled out Micromax A84 Superfone Elite in the market at a nominal price of Rs 9999 with a 10.1cm display and 1 Ghz Processor

It also offers a 5MP camera with LED flash in the newly-launched Micromax A84 Superfone Elite. There’s also a 0.3MP snapper in the front. Micromax A84 Superfone Elite packs in a 1630mAh battery that claims to 5 hours of talk time and 160 hours of standby time. This handset comes with 10.1 cms (approximately 4 -inches) WVGA full multi-touch screen. Though there is no word regarding the internal memory of this smartphone, one can expand it up to 32 GB through a microSD card.

Users can expand the memory of the A84 Superfone Elite up to 32GB. The connectivity options in the device include Bluetooth 2.1, Wi-Fi and 3G. It also features GPS with A-GPS functionality for location tracking.

On the flip side, when Ice Cream Sandwich has almost become the flavour of the month, it’s a bit disappointing to see Micromax offering Android 2.3.6 on this smartphone. Just like the other handsets in the Superfone series, Micromax A84 Superfone Elite also comes with voice assistant AISHA pre-installed on it.

Specification of Micromax A84 Superfone Elite

Operating system: Android 2.3 (Gingerbread); Display: 10.1cm IPS WVGA touchscreen; Processor: 1Ghz; Camera: 5MP with LED flash rear, 0.3MP in front; Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.1, Wi-Fi, 3G, USB 2.0; Memory: expandable up to 32GB; Battery: 1630 mAh battery;

This Micromax smartphone will go up against the recently launched Spice Stellar and iBall Andi series of Android based smartphones. This device does have the advantage of a large display compared to many devices currently available in this segment.

Sabyasachi Panda’s life under threat, claims Wife

Posted: 11 Aug 2012 12:30 PM PDT

Odisha Maoist leader Sabyasachi Panda’s life is under threat from both police and the rebels, his wife said Saturday, a day after her husband was expelled by the outlawed group.

“His life is under threat. Both the Maoists and police want to kill him,” Subhashree Das alias Mili Panda told reporters here.

Sabyasachi carries a reward of about Rs.20 lakh on his arrest and is wanted to stand trial in several cases. He is alleged to be the mastermind behind the kidnapping of Italian tour operator Paulo Bosusco and tourist Claudio Colangelo last year and also one of the prime accused in the August 2008 killing of VHP leader Laxmananda Saraswati in Kandhamal.

Panda, was in charge of the outfit’s Odisha state committee, was termed a ‘renegade’ by CPI(Maoist) central committee which also said ”In the most abominable, crooked and conspiratorial manner, he betrayed the party revolution and the great cause of the toiling masses.”

The CPI(Maoist) statement was signed by its politburo member Katakam Sudarshan (alias Anand). It said Panda’s 16-page letter to the outfit’s general secretary Ganapathy and released to the media recently, had ”the evil intention of liquidating the party and the revolutionary movement.”
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